I was reading about Hans Hotter and Lotte Lehmann on Wikipedia before I decided to look up the famous baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau where upon I found out that he passed away just several days ago on May 18, 2012 in his sleep in southern Germany. I first heard him in Karl Richter's 1958 recording of Bach's St Matthew Passion which is one of my favorite recordings of the work. There he sang the bass arias. But I had not listened to him for quite some time until I became interested in Wagner's Ring in 2010. The clip above shows him singing Gunther in Solti's famous 1960s studio recording of the Ring. Sometimes I think singers can over think their characters and then the feeling becomes artificial; but here I feel Fischer-Dieskau really gave Gunther the depth he was meant to have.
My roommate in college loved his Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin song cycle recording with Gerald Moore. The jaunty song Das Wandern begins the song cycle with the line Wandering is the miller's joy and ends with the stanza
Oh, wandering, wandering, my joy,
Oh, wandering!
Oh, master and mistress,
Let me continue in peace,
And wander!
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